Sunday, April 5

retrospective weekend

Its been manic, starting on Friday night. Got home avec mallard; breasts only, 'wild' (whatever that really means) from Wild and hit the ground running in the kitchen. I'd done two presentations at work that day which really drained me. Cooking really is my relaxation. My escape, my gourmand meditation. I'd found kale at the market that morning (my nero di toscana kale is ahead of the other, but its still only looking like that trick bunch of flowers the clown pulls from his bag) and knowing there was still a tonne of quince on the kitchen bench, not to mention the trees...it was duck breast with quince something-or-other, kale and potatoes to be roasted using the fat id rendered off and saved for this very notion from the last mallard breast Id rendered down. One of the things i really love about food blogging is how incredibly easy it is to cook seasonally. So many clever people with wonderful sites and recipes that make it so easy to use whats available. Just Google duck + quince. Viola! By half eight the kids were off doing their thing (having been already palmed off with home made ricotta ravioli) and we sat down to dinner under low light for a Friday feast of pan roasted duck with caramelised quince ( i really really recommend this way of handling the quince; sweet sour and slightly chewy with a piquancy all its own) sauted kale with garlic and oven roasted duck fat potatoes (there has to be a fancy name for this that disgusies the awful truth, surely?) We topped it off with a bottle of home made quince champagne which was a little cloudy due to the probably highly illegal alcohol content and hence an inability to freeze the yeast out during the second fermentation and corking(another post maybe?).

It was a beautiful night, very connecting, ending with satisfied bellies and very sore butts around midnight. We can get quite stuck at the dining table once we start, especially when we're planning our big adventure. But Id satisfied my craving for some happy meat, duck in particular and to use up some quinces. So that was Friday...